It’s another first for Dr. Craig Venter, the world’s leading human genome research biologist. Released in the January 24th issue of Science, a team of 17 researchers at his J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) has created the largest man-made DNA structure. By synthesizing the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium, JCVI has completed the second of three steps necessary to create the kinds of synthetic organisms that might one day recycle carbon using a modified photosynthesis process.

The third and final step will be for the JCVI team to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on this synthetically made genome. Speaking at Pop!Tech in 2006, Dr. Venter said this whole process would take two years, and the team seems well on their way. Whether genes move swiftly to become the design components of the future, as Venter suggests, or the field becomes logjammed by skeptics, he’s poised to be a leader for years to come.

You can read the press release here, and see pictures of the organism here.

Peggy Shea Andrews

August 29th marked the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

To commemorate the event for our community, Pop!Tech selected a very special installment for our August Book Club. This week, many of you will have received a copy of Chris Jordan’s book of photography, In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster.

The book provides an opportunity for reflection on one of the worst natural disasters in the history of our country. All proceeds are being donated to hurricane relief charities, but the Book Club donation will be going to a new member of the Pop!Tech community - a man named Craig Howat.

A few months ago, Craig applied to receive a Participation Grant to attend this year’s conference. Craig has been a teacher in Lousiana for 12 years. When his school laboratory was destroyed by Katrina, he and his dedicated students raised funds to rebuild a brand new science center. Together, they’ve raised over $10,000 to pay for supplies and materials, and they continue to fundraise in order to complete the project. You can see architectural plans of the building at http://www.l00k.org/lulinglandlab/luling-land-lab.

We’re proud to be part of Chris Jordan’s charity and Craig Howat’s vision, and look forward to their participation at Pop!Tech this October.

With this year’s Pop!Tech focusing on “The Human Impact” and exploring (amongst others) themes of human nature and technologies that transform the body and our understanding of the mind, you might want to take a look here is a look at some of the ways that humans can (and will?) “become” technology.

2005 speaker and the world’s first bionic man, Jesse Sullivan is one example:

Individuals who resist the artificial intelligence development often believe that this technology bodes nothing but evil, especially if research falls into nefarious hands. Others are grateful for this research. Witness Jesse Sullivan, an electrician who accidentally touched an active cable that contained 7,000-7,500 volts of electricity in 2001 and, as a result, lost both arms at the shoulder. Since then, he’s become the recipient of a ‘bionic arm’ created by scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. His experience, while truly unique, may help others lead active lives in the near future with these life-like prostheses.

This article features some of projects that are pushing the limits of “hacking” your own bodies.

Via::FreeGeekery.com

In October of 2005 Claire Nouvian, journalist, producer, and film director, took the trip of a lifetime traveling aboard a research submersible to the depths of the ocean.

“That was the most amazing, the most incredible moment of my life; as if I had been offered a trip to the moon … I thought of nothing else for months before it happened. Afterwards, for weeks I couldn’t talk about it without crying. I’m still not entirely over it … It was so beautiful and so intense, it changed me forever.”

Nouvian, whose interest in the deep sea was originally inspired by a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) directed by Pop!Tech 2005 speaker Marcia McNutt, has created a stunning new photo-book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Deep , recently published by Chicago University Press, with the hope of bringing the vastness of the deep oceans and their creatures to a wider audience.

Think you’ve seen images like these before? Think again.

You can purchase the hardcover, 256 page book at Amazon for $26.

On the heels of Brian Eno’s Pop!Cast, we are releasing his session-mate Will Wright’s presentation. He discusses how we can understand the complexities of the world around us by understanding its underlying simplicity.

Also released today, Bob Freling, Executive Director of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) explains how bringing solar energy to remote villages can be a key to promoting health, education and economic growth in developing worlds.

Will Wright

Bob Freling

You can watch more Pop!Tech Pop!Casts at www.poptech.org/popcasts.

We also encourage you to share these Creative Commons-licensed videos on
your website, blog or other video website. If you do, please let us know
at info@poptech.org.

Peter Diamandis on the bottom right

On April 26th 2007, famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking experienced complete weightlessness making him the first person with a disability to have the experience. The historic trip also brings one of the most influential thinkers on the cosmos closer to the stars.

Zero-G the privately held “space entertainment and tourism” company was founded by Peter Diamandis (Pop!Tech 2005 Speaker). Zero-G and The Sharper Image sponsored Hawking’s trip embarked from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Flights take place in a modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft.

When asked about the experience, Hawking said, “It was amazing. I could have gone on and on–space here I come!”

The Hawking flight was organized to benefit several charities.

Easter Seals
Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation
The X Prize Foundation
Augie’s Quest

Two seats aboard the flight were donated by Zero-G to each charity for them to auction off. All together the charities raised $144,000 dollars.

This trip on the Zero-G shuttle is in preparation for a hopeful space launch for Hawking on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic which launches in 2009.

And if you have $3,500 to spare, you can reserve a seat in one of Zero-G’s upcoming flights.

Mathematics, finance and foresight guru, and Pop!Tech 2005 speaker Nassim Nicholas Taleb is interviewed in this month’s Wired Magazine by James Surowiecki on the limits, biases and flaws in humanity’s ability to see the future. Nicholas’ latest book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (a follow-up to his also terrific 2005 cult hit, Fooled by Randomness) will be released on April 17th. Nicholas has an incredibly wide-reaching conceptual palette, and his insights are applicable to every human domain, from industry to homeland security, where human beings try to see what’s next. The Black Swan should be considered a 2007 must-read.

It was inevitable. After the extraordinary work done at the RIC with Dr. Todd Kuiken and patient Jessie Sullivan (featured in Alive From Pop!Tech) to create the world’s first bionic man, there had to be the world’s first bionic woman. That woman is Claudia Mitchell.

Back in 2004, former U.S. Marine Mitchell, severed her arm in a motorcycle accident. After reading about Kuiken’s work in a magazine, she was put in contact with the RIC and in 2005 underwent survey to fit her with a bionic limb. She is the fourth person–the first woman to undergo this kind of surgery.

“It is so rewarding for me as a physician and a scientist to lead research with the potential to positively impact the lives of amputees, including our U.S. service men and women,” said Dr. Kuiken. “On behalf of RIC, my team and I consider it a great honor to be able to serve our country and the individuals with disabilities around the world in this way.”

photo credit: Dayna Smith, Washington Post

These two images, separated by nearly half a century, represent the dreams of human exploration of space. Together they tell a story of lost opportunity and future promise.

Forty-five years ago today astronaut John Glenn completed an epoch space mission making him the first American to orbit the Earth. The Port Arthur News reported: “Glancing at the Earth at altitudes ranging from 100 to 160 miles, Glenn had a breathtaking panoramic view stretching 1,800 miles from horizon to horizon. He described the view as ‘tremendous’ and a ‘beautiful sight.’”

Just a few weeks ago the Cassini spacecraft snapped the above picture of Titan, the biggest of the 56 known moons orbiting Saturn and the second largest moon in our solar system. The Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit.

As planetary scientist (and 2005 Pop!Tech speaker) Carolyn Porco writes in a fabulous New York Times Op-Ed piece published today, in the 1960s the possibilities for human space travel were intoxicating: plans were laid for the establishment of a 50-person lunar base, a 100-person Earth orbiting space station and human landfall on Mars by the 1980s.

Instead, by abandoning the Apollo space program the country lost a capital investment of close to $160 billion and the collective knowledge of the tens of thousands of space engineers and scientists.

Yet Porco also paints an amazing vision: one of a revitalized NASA with plans to return to the Moon with a party of humans by 2020, a solar-powered human-tended research outpost by 2025 and preparations for a Mars trip soon after.

As she says: “Humanity’s future need not be confined to mere survival on our home planet. Other worlds beckon, we know how to reach them and we will once more be outward bound.”

It’s an ambitious and inspiring vision of the future–and one that maybe this time around, we can get right.

Bendable Concrete

In the vein of the Pop!Tech Sesson “Fabricating the Future“, Popular Mechanics has published some of the newest, coolest and most talked about tech concepts.

Some of the items listed include Bendable Concrete (pictured above) which are made of coated polymer fibers slide past each rather than cracking under pressure. The contrete has already been used to create expansion joints in a bridge in Michigan and has useful implicationf for structures in regions frequently hit by earthquakes.

See the full list here.